Readers' Comments

PR Week reports on BP's communications response ("[http://www.prweek.com/us/news/article/577597/BP-ramps-comms-AK-crisis-threatens-image/ BP ramps up comms after AK crisis threatens image]," (sub req'd), August 11, 2006):

BP has more than doubled the number of external communications people working in its Anchorage, AK, crisis-response unit in light of its announcement August 7 that it would cease more than half its production in Prudhoe Bay - the largest oil field in the US - because of severe pipe corrosion and a "small" oil spill. ...

BP America president Bob Malone and Steve Marshall, president of BP Exploration Alaska, have done interviews on a number of national networks, including CNN, NBC, and PBS.

BP also took a pool of about 25 television and print journalists to the scene of the spill and pipelines this week. [BP press officer Neil] Chapman said contacting employees via e-mail and an internal intranet site is also a part of the communications process. ...

[W]hile [[Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide|Ogilvy]] is assisting BP during this situation, the company has elected to do the majority of work on its own.

The current state of typical media-political speech in the U.S. is frightening. There is little debate. Politics and ideas to which citizens are attached are closer to religious belief and faith than to positions arrived at through careful consideration in or of debate. What is worse, much of what passes for political speech (and media coverage thereof) bears close kinship to wartime propaganda, where sensationalistic claims, difficult to immediately debunk, are launched as ways to try to control public attention in order to push through or maintain political agendas. This is far more Orwellian than Jeffersonian. A recent analysis of all the factors converging in the present to promote this state of affairs calls the latter The Rumor Bomb: http://pearlsbee4swine.blogspot.com/2006/02/rumor-bomb-convergence-theory-of.html
And generally see pearlsbee4swine.blogspot.com

In your article, you state that the SBVFT attacks against Senator Kerry were "Smears." In light of revelations regarding Kerry lies about Cambodian excursions, CIA/covert operations and multiple Vietnam "tours," it would seem to me that you fit into the category of the Pot calling the kettle, Black! The absolute truth of the accusations against Kerry is that, for the most part, they REMAIN UNRESOLVED. Which is to say that neither side has been able to produce definitive evidence to support their position. Any claim to the contrary is patently dishonest.
The FACT is that the Navy Department declined to investigate the accusations against Senator Kerry. Opting, instead, to confine their comments to weather the paperwork for Kerry's decorations were in order. No other judgment, of any kind, was decided by the Navy's Inspector Generals Office.
When a group, such as yours, promotes itself as "The CENTER for media and Democracy," I think you should make an effort to be little more honest. At the very least, you should get your FACTS straight.

The dreaded restless leg syndrome crisis. Yet other epidemic that is
going to bring down civilization. Marketing induced hypocondria!
The tragedy is how much attention from real social and planetary emergencies is diverted away by worry wart healthism. Hey, why not
use those restless legs to walk instead of using your car!
What good are peaceful, zen-like legs when it is 120 degrees out!

"If we cared more about CO2 than BMI, there would still be time."

Once again, George W. Bush uttered the "islamic fascist" expression. This time, it was all about a Heathrow plot uncovered at the most convenient time : Bush and Blair were said to have talked about this issue a couple of days earlier but didn't warn their partners, which means either they didn't care for them, or the emergency wasn't that critical. Anyway, Bush and Blair clearly needed a terror fix to go back up in the polls and to give some support to Olmert, also going down for his military failures. The message : war on terror is difficult but it has to be lead whatever the cost ; this is a noble cause, a moral one. Significantly, Jacques Chirac just used the term "immoral" to warn the US : not reaching a ceasefire agreement would be "immoral"... a clear echo to the messianic War on Terror propaganda.
This is not the first time Bush uses the "Islamic fascism" expression ; in a typically Karlrovish move, he's counterattacking with the very words that are being relevantly used against his Administration and now his protégés.

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Stephane MOT -
http://e-blogules.blogspot.com

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MSNBC just covered this story ("[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14233906/ A smoke screen at the ballot box?]," August 7, 2006). From a secretly-recorded exchange in Phoenix, Arizona:

Petition gatherer #1: Do you smoke?

NBC: No, I don't.

Petition gatherer #1: Oh, yeah. Well, this is The Non-Smoker Protection Act.

NBC: So, if I am a non-smoker, that's the one to do?

Petition gatherer #2: Yeah.

NBC: So this is a good one if you're a non-smoker?

Petition gatherer #3: Yeah, this is a good one because I have asthma, that's why I believe in this one.

NBC: This basically is a ban then on smoking?

Petition Gatherer #3: Yeah.

Well, that is just not true. If you really read the seven-page Arizona Non-Smoker Protection Act, you'll see it allows smoking almost anywhere liquor is sold.

Everyone's got a Myspace account nowadays. If you want to advertize, you go to where the people are. It's not like they have a poll "click here to become a marine 4 life: yes X no 0"

It's a parody.

There is no issue of copyright infringement.

All you bleeding heart liberals need to take a damn tour along with our Armed Forces brothers and sisters out there in the Middle East.

Personally, I'm sick of all the liberal views. CAIR can just as well kiss my you-know-what. These young men and women risk and sacrifice their lives to keep us here at home as safe as possible. Perhaps a little too safe, if you ask me.

The war dogs are becoming extinct...and are being fast replaced by flower-picking, everyone-can-get-along-if-we-respect-them daisies.

Man up and open your ******* eyes. Hate is hate...and it's gonna be around for a long damned while. I want to see what their reaction is gonna be the first time they're shot at while on tour. Are you gonna lay down your damned rifle and say "wait! we can solve this!"? Get real.

You can be liberal all you ******* want in the afterlife...cause that's where you're gonna be heading right quick and in a hurry.

Leave our boys alone, for crying out loud. Obviously, you f-ing liberals have way too much time and have life way too damned easy if you're gonna get your skirts in a bunch and your panties in a wad over a silly song.

Tanker, Dirk...I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your sacrifices and service. Semper Fi.

Sheldon, you have thus far been quite deft at your wordplay with Tanker...but what sacrifices have YOU made for your country? Please tell me that you have done more than author books.

Perhaps I am killing the messenger, but I am just SICK of hearing of how many liberals our boys have to deal with. In my honest opinion, they should round up all of them and send them on tour. I'm sure that they will have more to be concerned with/about than a song.

Of course not all PR people are untrustworthy, but I for one wish that the honest ones would speak out more assertively.

You talk about advocacy. If the PR industry as a whole were truly honest, the clients with harmful agendas would have a much harder time finding "advocacy" for hire. This advocacy isn't like that for criminal defendants, who are entitled by law to representation. There's no law that says anyone with an agenda is entitled to PR services.

"Don't confuse spin with advocacy."

Well, let's see:

I think of an advocate as someone who speaks out in the open for a particular person or cause. You know who he is and for whom and what he is speaking; you know his own stake in the matter if he has one.

But a spinner works in secret to manipulate what gets printed, broadcast and talked about. Often the agenda he's promoting has no obvious connection to the overt matter it's inserted into; the idea is just to plant thoughts or change attitudes without the targeted audience even noticing it. Usually the spinner would hate to have his role in the undertaking publically known, because that would shatter the illusion he seeks to create, and the whole thing wouldn't look so good to the people he's trying to influence. If truth and justice are ever well served under such conitions, it's more likely by chance than by design.

I would love to see high-profile industry groups like "PR Professionals Against Homelessness" or "PR Professionals Against Militarism." But I'm not holding my breath, for the simple reason that these hired "advocates" mostly go where the money is, just like anyone else with services to sell.

This or that firm may take on this or that pro bono project now and then, but, when you get down to it, there really isn't much money in promoting progressive political and social policies. It's the people with the money who would have to accept the limitations on their accumulations of power and wealth that progressive policies entail. As they say, money talks. But contrary to the saying, b.s. doesn't walk; it usually flies luxury class.

This, as I understand it, is the imbalance that CMD is working to rectify. If their work doesn't satisfy your own idea of "balance," you may have to resign yourself to looking elsewhere.

"If this site chooses to watch PR groups, that's fine, but it would be appreciated if you at least tried to remain objective."

It's not just a matter of watching the PR groups, but of realizing what is being done to our civil society and our democracy with the active help of many of those groups.

One symptom of our society's profound dysfunction is the huge class of people who make a cushy living assuring the public that everything is hunky-dory when it really isn't. We're not talking church bake sale PR here. We're talking war and peace, slavery and freedom. Here's one person who appreciates CMD's work exactly as they're doing it.